Acts also repeats stories of miracles Paul performed while in Ephesus. In this, too, there is a connection to the city itself. Ephesus had a reputation for magic. Paul's miracles were seen as a sign of the strength and truth of his Lord, and inspired Ephesians to burn their books of magic. But the success of Paul's mission was a threat to the city coffers. Acts notes that the books burned were worth 50,000 pieces of silver. And it also details a confrontation with the Ephesians who made their living from the tourists and pilgrims who came to the Temple of Artemis. While these stories provide vivid accounts of daily life in a city like Ephesus, it is likely that they exaggerate the threat Paul represented to the city's economic well-being.
When the time came to depart, Paul headed north and west to his congregations in Macedonia, then south to Corinth once again. It seems his primary purpose was to collect charitable offerings to take back to Jerusalem. Most of his return voyage to Jerusalem would have been by ship. Hopscotching across the islands of the Aegean, Paul sought further converts and contributions. From the ship's deck, in the channels between the islands and the mainland, sailing past rugged mountain forests and smooth open plains, the entire history of the Mediterranean would have been visible. Grand public buildings faced in marble, tenements and markets crowding the streets, theaters overlooking the sea, temples reaching for the sky, colossal statues of gods and emperors. Greek, Roman, Persian, Phoenician, and Egyptian. Ruins of cities and monuments destroyed by war, earthquakes, or worn away by time. Fortresses, farms and villages, vast commercial estates and palatial villas. Vineyards and quarries. The tent cities of nomads, and soldiers, and their fires in the night.
In the road to Ephesus from the interior, Paul would have passed Hieropolis, modern Pamukkale, with its terraced mineral pools and hot baths still open to the public. Like Athens, Ephesus experienced a construction boom in the second century. Some of the most intact structures, such as the Library of Celsus, therefore post-date Paul's visits. The site is no longer inhabited; the harbor silted up centuries ago and the population shifted to Izmir. Despite the fact that many statues, artifacts, and even buildings have been moved from the ancient cities of Turkey's Aegean cities  Ephesus, Didyma, Assos, Pergamum, Smyrna and others  to museums all over Europe and the world, the Archeological Museum in Izmir has large collections. There is an ancient tradition that the Virgin Mary spent her later life in Ephesus, and died here. There is also a "Prison of St. Paul."
Very little remains of ancient Alexandria Troas besides the man-made harbor, some wall fragments, and ruins of a Roman bath. Off the road to Assos is a Temple to Apollo Smintheus  Apollo of the Mice. Paul probably would have passed this temple on his solitary walk to meet his companions in Assos. The city gates of Assos include a nearly complete watch tower. Outside the gates is an ancient necropolis. Inside the walls are temples, an agora, and gymnasium. Artifacts from the site reside in the Istanbul Archeological Museum.
            According to Acts, Paul's ship put in at Caesarea around the year 57, and he proceeded to Jerusalem. Once there, he went up to the Temple for ritual purification and offerings. Whether he successfully delivered the collection is open to question; his intention to do so is clearly stated in his letter to the Romans. While in the Temple, Paul was accused of violating the Temple's sanctity. A riot ensued, and Paul was seized and then arrested by Roman officers. Once safe under guard in the Roman barracks, Paul asserted his citizenship. As such, he had the right to request an audience with the emperor in Rome. The crossing was best made from Caesarea, so he was transferred back to Caesarea. After audiences with various authorities, he boarded a ship bound for Rome in the custody of a Roman centurion. The centurion would have carried a diplomum, a pass giving him authority to demand civilian cooperation and services. Paul was accustomed to the hospitality of friends, and well versed at surviving in its lack. His centurion escort would have inspired suspicion and resentment  or toadying deference  in the civilians he encountered. It gave Paul an opportunity to see the Empire from the inside. Acts depicts a perilous sea voyage, where, for over three months, Paul himself kept the ship from disaster a number of times. After a brief stay with Christians in a small village on the Italian coast, Paul and his centurion headed into the heart of the Empire, the city of Rome.
raveling inland, the seven hills on the Tiber River rose to meet Paul and his centurion escort. Paul had come to plead his case before the emperor. Behind the city walls, Nero ruled the Empire. This is the period in which Acts places Paul's arrival in Rome. There is no corroborating evidence that Paul in fact ever reached Rome.
            If Paul did reach Rome, it would have been overwhelming. Three times larger than any of the cities Paul had visited, the city was a testament to the power and wealth of a living empire, and its streets teemed with people. Immigrants from Rome's territories and provinces flooded into the capitol. While the city provided unparalleled opportunities for social mobility, there were also tensions between ethnic groups and social classes, as expressed in the satires of the poet Juvenal. The majority of Rome's population lived in crowded apartment complexes, and spent the better part of their days outdoors  in the markets and the public forums, attending meetings of professional associations, gathering at the public fountains, or at spectacles in the theaters, arena, or the Circus Maximus. Unlike the carefully planned grid pattern of the streets in the colonial cities, Rome was a jumble of sacred precincts, public works, and crowded apartment complexes. For over eight hundred years it had grown from a rural village to an urban metropolis. Water was pumped in on massive aqueducts, while palaces, wealthy residents and public buildings had private plumbing, public fountains provided water for the citizens' daily needs, and a place to exchange the news of the day, to discuss elections, or the latest fashion. It was a city of public display. There were few places where public benefactions would not have been visible. Everywhere Paul looked he would have seen proclamations of status and pride, from grand temples to small dedicatory plaques, from colonnaded porticoes decorated with fine paintings and statues adorned with paint, jewels and precious metals to the scrawl of graffiti endorsing political candidates. The grander monuments were often paid for with the spoils of war, and all were marked with the names of those who placed them.
            Most notable of all were the buildings erected by Augustus Caesar, and their proclamation of his divine heritage as the son of the deified Caesar, whose family tree included Venus, and Romulus, the city's father. Beginning with Augustus, each emperor would deify his predecessor. The emperor's family was given similar honors, and divine status was inscribed on buildings and impressed on coins. Altars and temples received sacrifices to the cult of the emperors, and the cult quickly spread throughout the empire. There was no surer way to demonstrate one's allegiance with  or submission to  Rome. In this mix, the Jesus followers would have been very much a fringe group. As around the empire, the Jews of Rome were granted special immunity from certain requirements of Roman citizenship and residency. The antiquity of Judaism as a religion and a people inspired great respect. But the upstart Jesus followers, claiming their own Son of God, and practicing strange rites in congregations that met in private homes, were cause for disdain.
            Acts says that Paul was allowed to lodge privately, with guards, when in Rome. He had communicated with the congregation in Rome by letter, where he expressed his wish to visit. He was allowed to accept visitors, and he continued his missionary work even under house arrest. This is where Acts ends  with Paul awaiting his audience with the emperor after two years in Rome.
            In 64 CE, a catastrophic fire swept through Rome, leveling some of the city's most central, and most valuable, real estate. Nero announced plans to build a magnificent palace on the ashes, and rumors that the emperor had started the fire himself began to swirl through the city. Although he arranged for food and shelter for the crowds left homeless, he appropriated the land, began construction on his palace, and erected a bronze colossus of himself, rumored to have been 35 meters high. Whether or not Nero was responsible for the fire or its unchecked spread, it seems he shifted the blame to the city's Christians, and exacted his murderous rage on the fringe group. This appears to be the first state persecution of Christians. Although Jews like Priscilla and Aquila had been compelled to leave Rome in earlier expulsions of Jews, this was the first time Jesus followers were singled out for punishment. Later traditions maintain that Paul was beheaded at this time. The account of the persecution by the historian Tacitus betrays the distaste with which mainstream Rome received the Christian movement. But it expresses even greater disgust with the emperor Nero.
            With Nero's forced suicide in 68 CE, the city was plunged into chaotic civil wars. Over the course of the next year, four separate military generals would march into the seat of Empire and claim authority. Near the end of a bloody year of war, murder and reprisal, the legions of Egypt, Judea and Syria proclaimed their commander Emperor. His name was Vespasian, and he had been sent east to put down revolts in Judea in 66 CE when the indignity of the Jewish people under foreign rule had passed its breaking point. Rome was determined to impose order. Vespasian had been successful throughout Judea, but he did not enter Jerusalem. With the support of the legionnaires and the officers, Vespasian made a bid for Emperor. He sent a force into Italy to take the capitol, but stayed in Egypt to hold up the grain supply and starve his opposition out. His plan worked, and the Senate recognized Vespasian's claim. In the years to come, Vespasian would use his war spoils to replace Nero's palace with a building that could be enjoyed by all of Rome's citizens. He gave the appropriated land back to the Roman people in the form of a great arena, the Colosseum of Rome.
            Meanwhile in Judea, the citizens of Jerusalem had continued to wage a full-scale war of independence against Rome. In 70 CE, it would be Vespasian's son, Titus, who finally accomplished the deed. He marched on Jerusalem, and soon laid siege to the city. The walls collapsed, and the legions flooded into the city. They looted and burned the Temple; they decimated the population. Whether Paul was alive when the Temple was destroyed is impossible to know. But the movement he had been so elemental in spreading around the empire would have been deeply affected. Some may have sheltered refugees from the smoldering ground of Judea; others might have disavowed any connections with the rebels. At some point in the future, they would break away from their origins in Judaism completely. Rome would rebuild a temple on the site of Jerusalem's scorched ruin, and demand that the Jews continue payment of their annual tax to it, but it was not a Temple to the god of the Jews. It was a Temple to Jupiter Capitolinus, a manifestation of Jupiter associated specifically with Rome.
            At the heart of modern Rome, many of the monuments and structures of first century Rome have been preserved or excavated. In additon to the impressive Imperial palaces-including Nero's ignominious Domus Aurea  and the city forums, the Senate house and the Circus Maximus, ruins of an apartment house on the Capitoline hill evoke life in the ancient capitol. Many later features, such as the Arch of Septimius Severus, also evoke the time of Paul's visit. The museums hold plenty of fine art from the period-statues, frescoes, jewelry  as well as artifacts of daily life such as tools and housewares. The Trastevere neighborhood was home to artisans, dock-workers, and ancient Rome's Jewish community. The Mamertine Prison, where Peter and Paul are said to have been imprisoned, probably began as a cistern before being used as a prison. The Arch of Titus, which commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem, stands across the Forum from the prison. The tomb of St. Peter can be seen in the Vatican grottoes. The Pio Christiano Museum of the Vatican Museums had many sarcophagi and relief carvings of the fourth century and later that depict events in the lives of Peter and Paul. The Isola Tiberina is the island in the Tiber connected to the banks by Rome's oldest bridge, the Fabrician Bridge. In Paul's day, it held a Temple of Asklepius, a god of healing. Throughout the city, sections of walls and aqueducts remain. The Museum of Roman Civilization houses a scale model of the ancient city.